


Rule #1

by yallbitter



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical The Spiral Content (The Magnus Archives), The Spiral Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), Timeline is confusing, the archives from the outside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:14:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29130108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yallbitter/pseuds/yallbitter
Summary: Do not go into the archives unless absolutely necessary.It’s the first thing every new hire is told, before the actual written rules, before Elias’ insanely strict dress code policy, before the main fucking safety measures.Don’t go into the archives.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, but like its super vague and minor, helen distortion/eating people, implied, like one sentance, theres like lots of implied relationship in this idk
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	Rule #1

**Author's Note:**

> The wonderful @thinking_about_octokittens on Instagram helped with the story and writing of this! They're super talented and do heaps of really cool art, so you should go check them out!!

Do not go into the archives unless absolutely necessary.

It’s the first thing every new hire is told, before the actual written rules, before Elias’ insanely strict dress code policy, before the main fucking safety measures.

_Don’t go into the archives._

The employee can still distinctly remember how many people told them that on their first day, clustering around them with rumours and stories and descriptions of things they’d seen or heard “down there” as they called it. It had been more than enough to convince them to avoid the archive and anyone in it, that was for certain. The unspoken rule was cemented as firmly in their mind.

But life has a habit of taking things that are concrete and breaking them. Which, incidentally, is how the employee finds themself at the top of the stairs down to the archives. How every stapler in the whole building had broken, they couldn’t tell you. They’d looked everywhere, even asked Rosie to ask Elias if he a spare one, but nada. The only place left was “down there”, in the one place they’d never, ever, ever wanted to go into.

“It surely can’t be as bad as all say, right? The people are probably just…..overworked, and a little strange. I’m sure it’s fine.” The employee is stalling, muttering to themself at the top of the stairs, looking down anxiously at the ‘Archives’ etched into the glass of the door at the bottom.

“Right. Ok. I’m going in.”

True to their word, the employee marches down and throws open the door before they can talk themself out of it anymore than they already had. For some reason, they’d been expecting…well, they didn’t know what they were expecting, but it wasn’t this. The front room wasn’t really any different to the library, just older, and a little (a lot) creepier.

“Hello?” They call out uncertainly, feeling as though they are disturbing something sacred. That feeling quickly shatters and dissipates, however, when the head archivists office door slams open and a short, exhausted looking guy in a long skirt, several (the employee counted 4 at first glance) coats and an single neon pink wool sock rolls out on a battered desk chair.

“Can I help you?” The employee blinks a few times, trying to process the scene in front of them.

This is the head archivist? The famed Jonathan Sims, known for his serious nature and frankly incredible dedication to the whole ‘British stiff upper lip’ thing? There was no way this tiny, emaciated man, lighting four cigarettes one by one and lining them up in his mouth is the archivist.

“I was….uhhhh. Do you have a stapler down here? And staples?” They look away, his piercing gaze unnerving them immensely.

Jonathan takes a long drag from all four cigarettes (did he always have a hat on? The employee can’t remember) and blinks for what the employee abruptly realises is the first time since they saw him.

“You’d have to ask one of the others.”

“I- I’m sorry. Others?”

A deep, long-suffering sigh.

“Follow me.”

The employee follows him though another door behind a shelf into a breakroom that was much closer to what they’d been imagining the archives to be like. There is a tall blonde man in one corner, somehow holding 5 full cups of tea in his hands while a woman with a short blue bob and tattoos swirling up both arms pours something powdery into one of them. The employee hopes that it’s sugar. They are wrong.

“What did you get this time?” The blonde asks. The employee notes the woman’s terrifyingly gleeful response as they walk past.

“Asbestos! I had hell getting it, too. If he doesn’t drink this, I swear I’ll just stab the bastard right in his stupid fucking eyes.”

The employee decides that they can ignore that. That could just. Be filed away and never thought about again.

“This person wants to know if we have staplers and staples.” Announces the archivist, still sitting backwards on the chair and tugging his beanie lower on his head. (he didn’t have a beanie on before. The employee doesn’t know where it came from)

The employee suddenly notices two other women. They face away from each other, a considerable distance apart, and yet the mints they are throwing backwards over their shoulders land perfectly in the mouth of the other woman every time. One of them, the stocky one in a blue hijab, speaks up first, her voice authoritative.

“We don’t have any either. Helen takes them all.”

“We’re pretty sure she eats them!” Calls the asbestos woman from across the room. Tea guy, now holding 10 cups in his hands (didn’t he only have 5? Where did these come from?) nods enthusiastically.

“Yep! Here you go, Jon.” He hands the archivist a cup and continues. “She breaks all my pencils in half and then just leaves them in cups everywhere!”

The ginger buzzcut woman looks up briefly from the pile of snapped pencils at her feet.

“Yeah, that’s Helen.” She snaps another one and deposits it on the rapidly growing stack. “Nobody else but Helen.”

“I don’t approve about lying, Alice!” The voice is loud, distorted, accompanied by a laugh that sounds like a dog chewing ice and tinfoil. It comes from the ceiling, and the owner of it folds out of the door that had appeared there as though she was boneless. Except her hands. They seem to be razor sharp, hard, and longer than normal, their many joints clicking and popping with every movement. She is so bright and twisted that the employee can’t look at her without feeling…seasick, so they turn their attention to the new door on the roof of the archives.

The garish yellow door that this loud technicolour nightmare emerged from pulses gently, patterns and endless fractals spinning on its surface. It looks so close. The employee could reach out and touch it. Mesmerised, they begin to move, lifting their own hand slowly towards that too-long, twisted hand, bent and stretched with impossible bones, but then, as fast as it had begun, it was over. It seems that the one with buzzcut had spat a mint directly at the eye of the vaguely humanoid woman. If she had eyes, that is. Everything about her was seared into their mind, and yet the employee couldn’t recall any of it with clarity.

“Daisy! That was rude! I’m just trying to have a chat with our new friend here! What could poor old innocent Helen do to them?” She laughs, and the employee’s teeth feel like they’ve been run through a meat grinder.

Jon, who’s been silent for quite a while at this point, rolls towards the woman (Helen?) brandishing a half full cup of tea.

“You’re far from innocent, Helen. I Know everything you’ve done, even before you ate her.”

What? What? _What?_

“You people are no fun.” The woman’s face changes to an exaggerated impression of a pout. “I’m sure this new friend of yours is much more interesting! Would you like to see my corridors? I’ve been told that they’re….. thrilling!”

The blue haired woman scoffs angrily at her. “Would you fuck off already?” She snatches one of the broken pencils and throws it like a bullet at Helen, who unhinges her jaw and snaps it out of the air with long, shiny teeth. “Leave them alone!”

The sentiment is echoed by everyone in the room, but the employee swears they can hear a thousand other voices joining distantly in the background, a haunting Greek chorus of anger and fear. At this point, they’re shaking, breathing unsteadily. The feeling of the head archivists heavy gaze, and the intense sense of wrongness that had followed them all the way from the front room iss coming to a peak, and when Helen turns her head 360o around to face them with a smile wider than the doorframe she’d come out of, the employee can’t stop themselves from running. They push past a man in a hoodie as they tear up the stairs, stumbling and panting all the way back to research.

The second their feet leave the old carpeting of the archives they feel better, lighter, freer. Like they’d been submerged in water for hours and finally allowed to breathe. They’ve never been happier to see the familiar rooms of research, even if they are immediately crowded by everyone else asking if they had a stapler and if they’d seen anything weird. Brian is waving his “Fucked Up Things In The Archives” notebook and demanding a story to add to his collection. He wanted to publish it, one day.

“Guys, give me a minute, ok? I just. I need a minute. They…..didn’t have any staples. Or a stapler.”

Before they can continue their tale, however, there is the familiar creak of the research door opening, and the tea guy walks in. His hands are empty, this time, leaving them with a clear view of his shirt. A hand drawn picture of a guy getting his head wacked with a tube of some kind. Underneath this is scribbled ‘Fuck you, Elias Bitchard!’

 _Christ._ Good thing Elias didn’t make trips down here often. Or to the archives, apparently.

Tea guy approaches him, shrinks a little under the stares of their colleagues.

“Hi. Uh. I’m Martin. You took a cup and I need it back.” He is shy, awkward, a fish out of water in the modernised research, compared to the archives, and has a hand out, presumably so he can take the cup that the employee is _certain_ hadn’t been in their hand a second ago.

Martin turns to leave, but seems to remember something before he does. “You didn’t drink any, did you?” The employee shakes their head numbly, the events of the day catching up to them. “Ok, ok. Good. If you start feeling sick you should definitely see a doctor. Just in case, y’know? Like, I’m sure you’re fine but- Oh, hey Jon.”

“How’d you get that chair up here?” Blurts Trixie, ever curious and unable to stop zemself from talking.

Jon shrugs and spins the chair to Martin. Something about him seems to change slightly as he looks up at the taller man, like he was relaxing. What he says, however, is far from relaxing.

“Elias is on his way here. Do you guys have staples?” Brain stuffs his last packet into his pocket and shakes his head.

Martin, however, seems delighted with the news.

“Perfect! I’m sure he’ll want a cup of tea.” They grin at each other, and sure enough, Elias strides in, cold grey eyes regarding everything in front of him with faint humour and contempt. The employee stiffens as he walks up to them and pauses. He hums faintly and nods, then turns to Martin, who holds out the cup. It’s quite a beautiful thing, that cup. The employee’s mother used to collect them, before she forgot everything before age 22 and died in a hospital bed surrounded by strangers.

“Tea? I made it specially for you.”

Elias takes the cup and makes a great show of lifting it to his thin lips, before pouring it into the plant on Raphael’s desk.

“I prefer my tea without poison, thank you. I recommend you and Jonathan get back to the archives before I do something I might regret.” Even the employee, disoriented and slightly delirious, can hear the threat in his voice. What exactly the threat is, they can’t say, but it is definitely there.

With a frustrated huff, Martin takes the back of Jon’s chair and wheels him away. There is a crash, a curse and the sound of a body hitting concrete with a yell, and the employee runs to the doorway to see if they are alright. The chair is nowhere to be seen, and neither is the mug they came to retrieve. It is then, with a sense of unimagine dread, they look at their once empty hands and see that they are holding a mug. It is identical to the one served to Elias, and in the bottom of it is a small puddle of cold tea and about 15 snapped pencils.

It dawns on them that their mouth has a lingering taste of tea they never drank, and in the distance? A door waits, pulsing yellow and opened wide, welcoming, and yet horrifying in equal measure. Their head is pounding, but

whether it’s from the tea, the impossibly bright colours, or the sheer terror coursing through them, they do not know. Head spinning, they realise with a start that Mr Bouchard is still in the room, staring at them, purposeful and obviously intentional. His name tag reads ‘Jonah Magnus’. It didn’t say that a second ago. It didn’t. The employee _knows_ that it didn’t and yet…

His eyes… the colour is strange, like molten gold. They can no longer distinguish from those eyes and the twisting door that seems to be coming ever closer. Elias (Jonah?) steps to the side, and through the headache inducing, pulsing neon yellow of the door frame, they see...something. It’s impossible to find any one thing to focus on, and the more they look the more certain they are that they aren’t supposed to be able to focus on anything. Abruptly they realise that there’s nothing but the colours, the abstract idea of shapes they once recognised and the constant, high-pitched, ear-ringing laugh.

They walk slowly towards the door, trying to remember how to forget why the bothered trying to fight it in the first place. What’s one more painful lie on top of a lifetime of them? They take step after step, and their mind grows colder and colder, until their only recognisable emotion is fear.

Three more steps.

The laughter multiplies and warps, reaching a crescendo.

Two more steps.

Mr Bouchard is still there, although where ‘there’ is, the employee can’t be sure.

One more step.

The colours bleed and twist into one another, until they become something else entirely. Until they become-

A mug hurtles past their head, into the waiting doorway. The door slams shut immediately, and everything snaps back to ‘normal’. They turn around and see the murderous one (Melanie? They think it’s Melanie, at least) holding three more mugs. They cannot yet comprehend what has happened, and she takes them by the arm and drags them outside the room. The employee catches a glimpse of Mr Bouchard’s face as their eyes adjust to what they think is reality, and he looks disappointed. His eyes are still that strange gold cooler, hidden partially by glasses so small it doesn’t seem that they would help anyone see anything. His name tag still reads ‘Jonah Magnus’. Melanie lets the employee’s arm fall back to their side and glares at them. Shoving a stapler into their hands, she stalks away, calling over her shoulder as she goes.

“She’ll probably come back again. Don’t go in the door.”

The employee stares dumbly at the stapler and the small packet of staples they find themself with. The world is still spinning, and when Rosie walks up with a blanket and a cup, they reflexively hit it out of her hand. The rattle of broken pencils hitting the ground echoes around their head for what feels like eons, and they finally pass out.


End file.
